The company set up a team of about 10 people last year to
explore takeovers in Asia and the U.S., Deputy President Tatsuo
Tanaka, who oversees global operations for the Tokyo-based
lender, said in an interview in Hong Kong on Jan. 11. The bank
also wants to expand its retail lending, private banking and
asset management businesses, with a special focus on China,
India, Indonesia and Australia, he said.

Japan’s biggest banks aim to tap credit demand in Asia’s
fastest-growing economies as the European sovereign debt crisis
threatens to cut short their home market’s recovery from the
record earthquake in March. Mitsubishi UFJ’s profits from Asia
may climb about 12-13 percent annually without acquisitions,
Tanaka said.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., the group’s main banking
unit, has also brought together a 20-member team in China to
search for projects to fund, Tanaka said.

Tanaka declined to say how much Mitsubishi UFJ may spend on
acquisitions, or provide details on assets it may buy.

“It’s good timing because it’s not so easy for a lot of
European and U.S. banks to go into the acquisition market,”
Tanaka said. “We have a strong intention to go into non-organic
growth in Asia.”

RBS Assets

Mitsubishi UFJ agreed in November to buy Royal Bank of
Scotland Group Plc’s Australia-based infrastructure advisory
business. That deal followed the Tokyo-based lender’s 3.9
billion-pound ($6 billion) acquisition in 2010 of RBS’s project
financing assets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

More than 70 percent of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ’s
profit in Asia comes from non-Japanese companies, whereas in the
past the company did business overseas mainly to provide credit
to Japanese companies operating abroad, Tanaka said. In the U.S.
and Europe, the bank earns more than 80 percent of income from
non-Japanese companies or projects, he said.

Between 2010 and 2020, Asia needs to invest about $8
trillion in national infrastructure, according to a study by the
Asian Development Bank Institute. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial
Group Inc. President Koichi Miyata said last month that his bank
is also interested in acquiring loans for projects in Asia and
North America.